There are harmful chemicals all around us. And this is fine GlobeDebate
To the chemophobe, the danger posed by a chemical isn’t conditional on amount. It’s inherent in the substance. Poison is poison. The only safe exposure is zero. But if that were true, we’d all be dead., and a principal at Tactix, an Ottawa consultancy.
The irrational fear of chemicals – chemophobia – is rampant. Activists constantly publish scary reports about food and bodies contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals. Talk shows and books tell the fearful how to avoid toxic terrors and purge contaminants from their bodies. “Organic” has become the most desirable label in consumer marketing – one that commands a substantial premium – largely on the strength of vague fears that chemicals are killing us.
Consider that drinking water is routinely contaminated with arsenic, ammonia or asbestos. Sometimes these chemicals come from pollution. Far more often, they occur naturally. And they are utterly trivial. Below levels well known to science, and set out in government regulations, these chemicals have no effect on human health – so drinking a glass of arsenic-laced water is perfectly safe.
Unfortunately, these examples are typical of news reports about chemicals. The underlying assumption is always that the mere presence of a scary-sounding substance is itself significant. If the toxicologists’ concern of “how much?” is even acknowledged, it is buried in the story, and is usually expressed by an industry spokesperson – which makes elementary toxicology sound like corporate spin.
But we don’t live in the world that our brains evolved in. Today, thanks to science and technology, we can detect inconceivably tiny quantities. A part per million. Or billion. Or even trillion. How little is one part per trillion? The inimitable science communicator and chemist Joe Schwarcz has a vivid illustration: Imagine a football field surrounded by six-metre-high boards and filled to the brim with sand. Buried in there somewhere is one particular grain of sand.
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